Alumni, Faculty, Arches

Greece to the Heights

Professor Brett Rogers has been taking his students to Greece for years. In May of this year, he led a trip designed for alumni and friends.

“Boarding a boat in Greece is like nothing you’ve ever experienced,” Professor Brett Rogers tells the bus passengers. “As soon as they lower the gangplank, it’s a mad dash. Hang onto your suitcase and just get on the boat!”

Rogers, a professor in the Greek, Latin, and Ancient Mediterranean studies program, gives a bracing smile from the front of the bus as it winds its way down to the port of Thira, on the island of Santorini. Over years of guiding student trips, he’s learned the usefulness of being transparent about the experience you’re about to have.

Rogers was at the helm of a Puget Sound-sponsored trip in Greece this past May, and on that particular day the group was scheduled to take a high-speed ferry to Heraklion, on the island of Crete. After disembarking, Rogers counted off the 24 travelers—alumni, faculty, trustees, parents of recent grads—doing it in Greek, naturally. It was only Day Three, but Rogers noticed an almost family-like camaraderie had already formed among the group, similar to the bond he sees among students.

Rogers had kicked around the idea of an alumni trip for years. “We’re one of the few universities to have an ancient Greek motto,” he says. “If we’re going to the heights—pros ta akra—a hell of a way to do it is by going to the Acropolis.”

When Rogers got the green light to put the trip in motion, his first call was to the woman in Greece who’s become his go-to travel agent after 25 years of sojourns to the Mediterranean. She suggested that the group start in the islands and work their way back to Athens, which interested Rogers from a pedagogical perspective. The natural chronology of moving from Akrotiri, Santorini’s exquisite Bronze Age site, to the Palace of Knossos in Crete, then jumping to the mainland to explore Athens, would allow Rogers to start with the picturesque islands you see in postcards, then challenge the idea of Greece as a tourist destination and tell a fuller story of Greece as a real and complicated country.

“You can sign up for tours that will hit the historic sites, but having taken classics courses at Puget Sound, I knew the quality and perspective that would be involved,” says Hannah Bartlett ’12, an executive assistant based in Seattle and one of the trip participants. Bartlett saw the trip as an extension of courses she’d enjoyed as an undergraduate, and she particularly appreciated the accessibility of the material, since expertise in the group ran the gamut—from those who majored in classics to others with only a passing familiarity with Greek mythology.

Rogers knew he would need a teaching assistant to help keep the trains running on time, and immediately thought of Annie Lamar ’19. A former classics and computer science major who traveled with Rogers to Greece as a student in 2018, Lamar is now a Ph.D. candidate at Stanford, doing research at the intersection of classics and artificial intelligence.

In many ways, the trip replicated what a study abroad experience is like for students: Rogers and Lamar did guided tours at nearly every site, and Sara Freeman ’95, professor of theatre arts, gave a lecture on the history of Greek theater from the steps of the Theater of Dionysus, as well as a lecture at the theater at Epidauros.

For some, it offered a taste of the study abroad experience they might have missed as an undergraduate. Trustee Ken Willman ’82, P’15, P’18, wasn’t able to spend a semester abroad when he was a student. Since then he has lived in London, Tokyo, and Hong Kong and has traveled extensively overseas, but Greece was still on the bucket list for him and his wife, Rosemary. “There was so much great discussion; it was a true in-the-field experience,” Willman says. “We rarely travel with groups, but a trip like this, led by someone like Brett Rogers and with a group of people who all have this common connection, was an unusual and special opportunity.

“One of the most important parts of my Puget Sound experience was the opportunity to engage personally with professors,” Willman says. “This recreates that experience.”

The alumni tour group at the Temple of Apollo in Greece.

The alumni tour group at the Temple of Apollo in Greece.

It wasn’t all academic: Between touring ruins and museums, the group swam in crystal clear waters, explored local markets, and during a particularly memorable stop in the seaside village of Matala on Crete, some enjoyed an impromptu retsina (a traditional Greek wine infused with pine resin) tasting over lunch.

On the final day, the group stood amidst the clifftop ruins of the Temple of Poseidon at Cape Sounion. It was more peaceful here than the bustling Acropolis or Delphi, and the travelers quietly took in the glistening Aegean Sea one last time as they listened to Rogers read aloud a passage from “The Iliad” in dactylic hexameter, and reflected on all they had experienced over the past 10 days.

They wouldn’t soon forget the trip, or one another.

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